Rich's Ramblings
by Rich Schinnell
Here I am again on the bleeding edge of technology and, as usual, I have been bleeding a bit. I've been a beta tester for Windows95 for over a year now and have had my ups and downs. Some of the early betas would really get confused by my system. Later ones seemed to be getting better, and the Windows95 final beta was put up on the Microsoft server the weekend of February 25th. It comes on 24 high density 1.44MB floppies, or about 36MB of file transfer downloads. I am quite impressed, so far. I expect some more Final, Final, Final betas over the next month or so.
I got a new power machine, so the installation was a bit different from past beta versions. 16MB RAM, Pentium 90, PCI Diamond graphics board, 17" .26dpi Mag 17F (picked it up for $575 at a computer show), Adaptec PCI SCSI II adapter board for my triple speed NEC CD-ROM, Megabytes of disk space, ProAudio Sound board (OK, so I'm cheap). All this was recognized by the Windows95 setup program after a couple of fits and starts.
I think the reason that I had a bit of a problem during the installation was that I didn't have any hard disks on the SCSI controller. I am using the Intel on board IDE controller. I will say this: The Setup program was able to recover from this feature and without any problems. It recognized my CD-ROM and sound board without me having to install any drivers or whatever. Everything worked fine. It even recognized my modem, mouse, network interface board (Intel), and the Novell on the other end of my wires.
I have been using it to run my BBS out of a DOS session window for about a week, and I've had no lock-ups . . . yet! I loaded my BBS in a window and then logged on from another machine. Started a Z-modem 28.8 bps file transfer of a 1.5MB file. On the Windows95 machine, I opened another window with WordPerfect 6.1, loaded a large document, and sent it to the printer. The Z-modem file transfer didn't seem to miss a beat. I even loaded a couple of other programs to see what kind of multiprocessing capability Windows95 had. It seemed to work great. I am about to install a third communication port to try to run two nodes of my BBS off of one machine. Wish me luck.
Caution: This is not for the faint of heart. The Windows95
install program overwrites your existing Windows 3.1 files as
well as the boot system file.
Remember: Windows95 is an operating system, not a program run
from DOS. It loads its own hidden system files. I have an
unusual lash up with my computer: I have a removable device as
my C: drive where I have three Caviar 2200, 220MB hard disks.
Any one of them can be the C: drive just by turning the power
off and inserting one of them in. Each of the disks is mounted
in a removable slug that has a key lock and fits into a slot on
the front of my computer. That way, it is easy to recover from
serious mistakes. I have Windows95, OS/2 Warp, and regular DOS
and Windows 3.1 on separate removable slugs.
Bottom line: It takes a bit of guts to install the beta version
of an operating system, but it was worth it in this case. And,
of course, it helps to have the safety net of another hard disk
to plug back in so that you can get real work done. Microsoft is
going to have a road show that will demonstrate all this on the
18th of May 1995, downtown at some site to be announced later.
We all should get invitations in the mail during the month of
April or first part of May. It will be a special meeting hosted
by Microsoft, but we will be there with
our band of merry
people, selling memberships and such. By that time, many of you
might have had the chance to become a "beta" tester for the
advertised $30. Kinda strange to pay for testing a product, but
the world is getting stranger all the time. <G>
New Subject: Again I violated my own rule about buying software
directly from manufacturers. I got taken by the WordPerfect
offer of "Special Pricing," and I found it cheaper at Egghead
later. I turned right around and ordered the Taxcut94 and
Maryland state versions last October from MECA Software. I
received the Federal 94 edition around the middle of January
with the promise that the State edition would be shipped by the
middle of Feb. It was the 1st of March before I received it.
I had used TaxCut for my 1993 taxes and was impressed by how easy it was. I got impatient and had some free time (Huh!). Let me digress here a bit: I was at the Gaithersburg Price Club and forgot that I had purchased TaxCut instead of TurboTax, so when I saw the Maryland State version of TurboTax, I picked it up for the $22 price. Of course, I felt like a dummy when I returned home and found that it wouldn't work with anything else but TurboTax 94. So I said, "Oh well! Live and learn."
I then visited a computer show at the Montgomery County Fairgrounds on Feb. 26 and looked around for the TaxCut MD edition, but I didn't see it. I priced TurboTax 94, and the lowest price was $44.95. I was tempted to pick it up so that I could get my taxes in the mail. I should have waited for the TaxCut MD version in the mail, but you know the impatience of youth. <G> I then went back to Price Club and TurboTax Federal 94 edition was only $29, so I picked it up and got my 94 taxes all done and in the mail. The following day, my TaxCut MD version showed up. Go figure. . . .
But I did learn one thing. From now on, I will wait for the final versions to show up in discount software places, like computer shows, Egghead, Computer City, or CompUSA. The Meca people had my $50 for the federal and state versions since last October.
Talking about temerity. The Intuit people have a registration form in the TurboTax package for you to pay your money now, for delivery of the 1995 tax package in January 1996. Whew! You gotta be dense to allow them to use your money for a whole year for free. Now, if they gave you a whopping big discount, then it might be okay, but no way for me.
BTW (By The Way), both tax packages are real easy to use, and they lead you down the garden path to doing your taxes in a short period of time. I recommend both TurboTax94 and TaxCut94.
Rich is retired from the USN and Vitro corporation. Presently,
he is the president of Capital PC User Group
and does a bit of
systems consultation on the side. He is on the Helpline and
enjoys helping members with their problems. Evenings he can be
reached at (301) 949-9292, on the Internet at
schinnel@cpcug.org, or on the Members
Information eXchange (MIX)
BBS at (301) 738-9060. He is in the CPCUG offices on a random
basis to keep the staff on their toes. He does not own stock in
Microsoft, even though he should have
done that years ago.
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